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101 Foreign Aff. 10 (2022)
Why War Fails: Russia's Invasion of Ukraine and the Limits of Military Power

handle is hein.journals/fora101 and id is 672 raw text is: 10 FOREIGN AFFAIRS Why War Fails Russia's Invasion of Ukraine and the Limits of Military Power Lawrence Freedman On February 27, a few days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian forces launched an operation to seize the Chornobaivka airfield near Kherson on the Black Sea coast. Kherson was the first Ukrainian city the Russians managed to occupy, and since it was also close to Russia's Crimean stronghold, the airfield would be important for the next stage of the offensive. But things did not go accord- ing to plan. The same day the Russians took over the airfield, Ukrainian forces began counterattacking with armed drones and soon struck the helicopters that were flying in supplies from Crimea. In early March, according to Ukrainian defense sources, Ukrainian soldiers made a devastating night raid on the airstrip, destroying a fleet of 30 Russian military helicopters. About a week later, Ukrainian forces destroyed another seven. By May 2, Ukraine had made 18 separate attacks on the airfield, which, according to Kyiv, had elimi- nated not only dozens of helicopters but also ammunition depots, two Russian generals, and nearly an entire LAWRENCE FREEDMAN is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London and the author of the forthcoming book Command: The Politics of Military Operations From Korea to Ukraine. Russian battalion. Yet throughout these attacks, Russian forces continued to move in equipment and materiel with helicopters. Lacking both a coherent strategy for defending the airstrip and a viable alternative base, the Russians simply stuck to their original orders, with disastrous results. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has described the Chorno- baivka battle as a symbol of the incom- petence of Russia's commanders, who were driving their people to slaughter. In fact, there were numerous similar examples from the first weeks of the invasion. Although Ukrainian forces were consistently outgunned, they used their initiative to great advantage, as Russian forces repeated the same mistakes and failed to change their tactics. From the start, the war has provided a remarkable contrast in approaches to command. And these contrasts may go a long way toward explaining why the Russian military has so underperformed expectations. In the weeks leading up to the February 24 invasion, Western leaders and analysts and the international press were naturally fixated on the over- whelming forces that Russian President Vladimir Putin was amassing on Ukraine's borders. As many as 190,000 Russian troops were poised to invade the country. Organized into as many as 120 battalion tactical groups, each had armor and artillery and was backed by superior air support. Few imagined that Ukrainian forces could hold out for very long against the Russian steamroller. The main question about the Russian plans was whether they included suffi- cient forces to occupy such a large country after the battle was won. But PACKAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRIAN STAUFFER

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